Baby names

Most parents have a story behind why they selected their child’s name.

If one of the twins my husband and I are expecting turns out to be a boy, we’re planning on Andrew James (A.J.). Andrew is the middle name of a close friend of ours who died in an accident several years ago. He left the kind of legacy that we’d want to see our son develop for himself.

We’d love to hear about how you arrived at your child’s name. Then visit our baby names database to see how popular it was/is.

10 Responses

I was sitting at the nurse’s station at the hospital looking through the phone book, with my labor pains four minutes apart when an intern asked me if I needed help. I told him that I was looking for a name for my baby and he said that he would be happy to get me the hospital’s book of baby names. I then had to inform him that I wasn’t looking for a first name.

Jenn,
My Husband and I are Catholic and we wanted to give our son a Christian name and give him his grandfather’s middle as well. So we arrived at the name Christopher which means Christ Bearer. His middle name came from grandpasâ€™ middle name which is Francois. When we put the name together, we came up with Christopher Francois Joseph. When we got pregnant with our second child I almost miscarried at four months and God saw us carry to full term. When our daughter arrived we already had a name in mind. Natalieâ€™s name means, the birthday of the Lord. Natalie is a blessing. Her middle name came from her grandmother’s middle name Leanne. When we put the name together the second time around, we came up with Natalie Leanne Joseph.

Our son, Campbell’s middle name is Robert, which comes from my husband’s grandfather’s middle name, and my grandmother’s name (Roberta). Our first daughter, Callagh (pronounced like Calla Lily), is named after my husband’s grandmother’s maiden name: Callaghan. Her middle name, McCarthy, was chosen for my other grandmother’s maiden name. So, when we were thinking of names for our 3rd (and last) child, a girl named Ellery (chosen for the double L to go with Campbell & Callagh, and also a Celtic sounding name), we added the 4th grandmother, Laura for her middle name. We thought it was a great honor to include all the grandmothers in our 3 kids names!

My son Chance has my maiden name as his middle name. It was a way to carry on my father’s name since Chance is his only grandson. My daughter, Charley May, is named after her grandmothers. My mother-in-law’s first name (Charlene) and my mother’s middle name (May). Chance is not a family name, but we joke that we took a “chance” on being parents. So far, so good!!

Well when it came to naming our child my husband and I had no trouble with boys names. We had one all picked but the problem was we found out we were having a girl and that was not an easy choice at all. We knew we would use Elizabeth to honor my great grandmother (it is also my middle name) but a first name not so easy. Nothing gave the man “heat” as he would tell me when I made suggestions. This went on for about a month until one night we were watching Law & Order SVU and he sat up and announced “How about OLIVIA” which I had suggested a month before and he said no. So we have Olivia Elizabeth.

Our choice was a blending of language, I guess. My husband is French-Canadian and we wanted a French name. My family are anglophones and his francophones, so we wanted a name that both families could pronounce. We thought we chose well: Alexandre. Since both of us speak both languages (well his English is better than my French) we didn’t realize how hard that name would be for the anglophones to say, but we love it. The rest of the name was easy: his middle name is my last name and he has his father’s last name: Alexandre Brazee De LauniÃ¨re.